Total takes the deep dive into GPU for Seismic Imaging

Total decided to acquire a new supercomputer based on GPU technology. The exact solution is composed of IBM Power System AC922 server nodes with Nvidia Tesla V100 GPU and Mellanox InfiniBand interconnect. The main point considering using GPU is the data transfers inherent to the parallel algorithms. But the biggest change to take into account is about the node density which significantly changes the ratio computing capability versus memory amount. The main bottlenecks related to this technology transfers have been deeply studied, depending on seismic algorithms. Our GPU-ready seismic imaging toolbox is now composed of OpenACC and CUDA implementations so as to offer a good threshold between code maintainability, portability and performance. Preliminary results on synthetic and real datasets are very promising. The performance of network and I/O are another critical points that we are working on as the computer power is increased roughly two times more than the global bandwidth to the scratch. We strongly believe that extending the usage of compression technology into all seismic imaging workflows will improve the global performance of the IBM Power9 machine.